Whites in South Africa increasing targets of hate-crimes

Two political parties in South Africa yesterday expressed deep concern over the growing hate-speech and the growing incidents of racism-related violence with which 'whites' -- mostly Afrikaans-speakers -- are attacked in violence-driven incidents.

This problem is being reported countrywide and also includes the fact that some black policemen have been reported for refusing to respond to emergency calls after Afrikaner families called the emergency numbers of police stations during an armed attack against their family in their homes, or in public.

The Freedom Front Plus and the African Christian Democratic Party both expressed concerns about the growing unmotivated and very violent attacks targetting Afrikaners. Many Afrikaners, especially the children who have undergone such attacks, are increasingly fearful of leaving their homes.

The latest incidents involve the white Afrikaner residents of Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal, where people live in fear after nine elderly Afrikaner couples were attacked and cruelly mauled, with two women raped, within just two weeks. Also see the targetting of hundreds of thousands of Afrikaners in the Pretoria region, here

All the men were beaten severely while being tied up by their hands and feet. The gang, estimated to have from four to seven members, carried large knives and spoke with 'foreign African accents', which local police would not specify further.

Pictured here are local Lawyer Dion Röder (63), and his wife Talita, still badly bruised after they were attacked on December 17 in their home. This lifetime resident of Ladysmith also says he’s never seen the towns people so afraid. Röder said while he and Talita were attacked, his wife fought like a lioness to stop her sixteen-year-old daughter Michelle, who was visiting from Canada where she lives with her dad, from being gang-raped. They were all getting ready for bed when four men suddenly loomed up out of nowhere in the couple's bedroom, he said. The lawyer tried to fight them off with his bare hands, but there were just too many of them and they tied him up after giving him a thorough beating.

Then they forced him to watch while four men beat up his wife, kicking her and hammering at her with their fists. Röder said he'd pleaded with the men not to rape the women - and they then replied that they 'weren't in the business of raping women'. However two other elderly Afrikaner women were raped just a few days later in identical attacks by men with very similar descriptions.

Police believe these attacks are all carried out by the same gang.The lawyer says he everybody is buying even more burglar alarms and security fencing than they had before -- and signing up enmasse with security companies. "We aren't used to this kind of violence, Ladysmith has always been a reasonable peaceful village,' he said.

In one attack this Christmas eve past, a 70-year-old Afrikaner woman was gang-raped by seven attackers, and on the same night, another woman's jawbone was smashed. All the attacks occurred within a radius of just 1km.

The owners of a Ladysmith guest house, Andy and Sheila Breedt, were also attacked by five armed men in their bedroom while they were asleep inside their secured home. Her face was beaten to a pulp. Police superintendent Sakkie Tredoux, who examined the forensic evidence at the scenes, said these attacks were all carried out by the same gang, armed with large knives. From witness statements it also appeared that they were not South African men - their tribal language indicated that they came from another African region.

Tredoux said the gang went through considerable trouble to reach the victims, while gaining very little financial reward in return: they had managed to crawl underneath electrified fences, get past fierce guard dogs and even got across razor-wire to reach their victims.

Often, very little of real value is ever stolen - although Mr Röder's shotgun was stolen, and they drove off in Röder’s car, such 'farm-attackers' usually abandon the cars.

Police captain Charmaine Struwig of the Ladysmith police confirmed that they have stepped up patrols in town, and also are coordinating their crime-fighting efforts with the private security companies to create an umbrella security network. Nobody has thus far been arrested.

The Transvaal Agricultural Union, who represents the country's rapidly-shrinking number of white commercial farmers, said that from all the reports they are receiving from their membership, the entire Afrikaner community was becoming 'increasingly terrified of the police'.

3,031 FARMERS MURDERED SINCE 1994

This farmers' cooperative also recorded a rapid increase of armed attacks targetting white farmers since December 1 last year. Over the past two months, In Gauteng province, 33 farmers were killed in a total of 47 attacks by armed gangs; North West province had 7 attacks; the West Cape 6, North Cape 2, Southern Cape 1, KwaZulu-Natal and Free State 8, Mpumalanga 17 and Limpopo province, 8.

Proportionally higher murder rate for Afrikaner minority:

They also pointed out that the proportional murder/homicide rate targetting Afrikaans-speaking whites was 10%; whereas this -- very visible -- minority only represents 7% of the entire population.

Countryside methodically cleansed of all Afrikaners:

Massive exodus of Afrikaners from the countryside

Since the last official SA government census in 2001, Solidarity trade union, which represents miners and artisans, also reports that there has been a massive, forced exodus by 'whites' from all the traditional Afrikaner rural areas for two reasons: the widespread farm-confiscations by the government, and the ongoing violence targetting white Afrikaners families in the countryside and rural villages.

Food shortages due to exodus from farms:

The TLU spokesman Groenewald noted that these farmers for years still managed to produce food for the commercial markets while also living in a constant state of siege from armed militia-style gangs which are only targetting Afrikaner homesteads and killing their patriarchs. However the country's food-production is now suffering a serious decline because the best-qualified farmers are being forced from the countryside.

This year, two census surveys were carried out by experts from Solidarity trade union's Helping Hand charity to establish the extent of empoverishment among these displaced rural Afrikaners due to what they refer to as the 'ethnic-cleansing of Afrikaners from the countryside'. The census locates these 'hidden, secret pockets of Afrikaner poverty' so that these people can be helped with upliftment programmes launched by the widely-respected trade-union. The South African government does not provide food-relief or free housing for such displaced white families, since they belong to the sonamed 'previously advantaged group'.

More than 380,000 displaced Afrikaners live in shacks, tents:

Their two surveys found that displaced rural Afrikaners awre mainly fleeing to the Western Cape and Gauteng, where anaverage increase of 35% in the Afrikaner population was recorded in church congregations and trade-union membership since the official SA government census was carried out in 2001.

Solidarity notes that over the past eight years, hundreds of thousands of these displaced Afrikaners have started living in squatter shacks, ‘ informal housing ‘ in backyards, or are moving around in their tents and caravans. See

The police have obtained considerable proof that there are organised farm-attack gangs which even include on-duty police officers, who are targetting only white families: last year, the entire eight-member criminals-investigations team at the Magalies police station was arrested and charged with carrying out a large number of armed attacks targetting Afrikaner farms as well as terrorising foreign African families into returning to their home countries in so-called ‘xenophobic’ attacks.

On Friday, 2 January 2009, detectives from the Howick police station in Pietermaritzburg , acting on very specific information, also went all the way to upmarket Sandton near Johannesburg to arrest three farm-attack gang members. Police spokesman Henry Budhram said the three men 'formed part of a national farm-attack gang which travels all over the country to attack farms'. They were seeking them for the December 10 2008 farm attack at Freeland Farm in Dargle, KZN.

They arrested the three at an upmarked luxury home in Sandton and recovered four stolen firearms and a shotgun looted from Freeland Farm during the robbery. The victims, Mrs Linzi-Anne Smith (62), her husband, Robert, (65) and two friends were assaulted - especially the old woman was targetted.

The car they took, was found abandoned nearby shortly thereafter. See the police report here